Tampa Bay Rays News and Links: OPENING DAY!!!!CELIJR*#J$#*$JT$

It’s finally here.

It may not be in the form we imagined, and it certainly isn’t on the date we imagined, but the 2020 Rays season will be underway in less than 10 hours, and that’s a pretty great sentence.

Let’s leadoff, as the ABSOLUTELY EFFING AMAZING Rays social media team did, with a moment of clarity and then get to the baseball news of the day

Rays Links

* Times’ preview for the opening series of the season

* It still is weird to watch these games without fans

* MLB.com’s opening series preview

* Cool article on Choi and Ryu sharing a high school

* These fan cutouts are amazing, and this is a cool use of one

Around the League

* MLB will expand its playoffs to 16 teams in 2020... I cant’ if I love or hate this (I definitely love the top seed getting to choose their opponent — amazing)

* Here are FanGraphs’ updated playoff odds

* MLB.com guide to all the games on Opening Day

* Betts signs a mega-deal with L.A. Boston fans in agony; hate to see it

* Staff predictions from: FanGraphs and The Ringer

* Mookie Betts, and all of the S.F. Giants took a knee during the anthem last night; I’ll be curious to see what Kevin Cash and the Rays decide is the most appropriate approach

* Takeaways from baseball’s opening night